


All I want for Winter Veil (Is You)

by Kangoo



Series: Miscellaneous Warcraft Stuff [11]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fantasy Christmas, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kael'thas Centric, M/M, The Feast of Winter Veil, i swear it's disgustingly sweet and fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13135926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Kael'thas's life, as told through his first Winter Veils — all five of them.It feels like forever since he's last come home to celebrate Winter Veil — as if it he hadn't had a home to come back to, for all these years.





	All I want for Winter Veil (Is You)

**Author's Note:**

> It's 3am on the 25th but fuck it i'm done with this, finally
> 
> No proofreading we die like men
> 
> Or: taking Kael'thas's obvious teahcer kink to its most literal sense
> 
> this au exists weirdly in the timeline because on the one hand everything in canon happened in the past, but on the other hand most of the characters never existed before so, you know
> 
> I kept going back to present tense so if I forgot any in other places than +1 (where it’s supposed to be) tell me! i hate past tense i'll never do it again fuck it all
> 
> happy holidays ya filthy animals

**1.** **The first he remembers**

 

There is a special kind of happiness in being warm when the entire world is freezing, in watching the snow falls from the comfort of one's own home. Young Kael'thas never lingered on the feeling, in the way small children never truly linger on _anything_ , too busy jumping in that same snow his parents preferred to appreciate from afar. Still, Kael'thas remembers those evenings, during the coldest days of the year, when it was too late and the temperatures were too low for his parents to let him go play outside. In the midst of a game-filled winter, there is this bright spot of happy idleness that comes from being a bright child locked inside with a great number of books he can't quite understand yet. The smell of paper and the warmth of the flames, close enough to his skin that he'd have to scoot further away in some time, are as much a part of his childhood as any toy or stuffed animal.

 

It's a feeling of peace he has since tried and failed to imitate; the kind you only find in a childhood home, within the mind of a child unburdened by adult issues.

 

All Kael'thas can do to experience it again is bring back his oldest memory, the pure — albeit imprecise — happiness of the first Winter Veil he remembers. He was young at the time, no more than six year old, and all that that remains of this memory are a few blurry snapshots and vague feelings, like a half-forgotten dream or something seen through a smudged lens. Despite this, Kael'thas remembers it fondly, unsure and uncaring of how much of it he truly lived and how much has been imagined by his mind to fill the holes left by time and a child's poor memory, how much was distorted by nostalgia and grief.

 

He brings those memories up like old photos, like opening a shoe box full of polaroids you don't fully remember taking. The context, the _moment_ is missing; all that's left is a single picture, meaningless if not for what his now-adult mind makes of it.

 

The pine tree, covered in fairy lights and colorful glass bobbles, is one of those. His childish mind painted as something incredible, almost otherworldly: at the time it looked gigantic to him, easily twice his size, and it glimmered like something right out of a fairy tale. It could have been, considering the magic his father liked to add to it, summoning small will-o’-wisps to float around the branches. They didn't burn, barely felt like anything real at all, but the rainbow of colors they cast over the living room was real enough to Kael'thas, and he remembers spending what felt like hours simply staring at them in awe.

 

His parents are everywhere in these scattered memories, less as images than as impressions, present but out of sight. There is nothing a child is more sure of than the presence of their parents, to the point that it didn't felt like something worth mentioning, worth remembering, because they would _always_ be there, close enough to catch them if they were to fall.

 

Time has changed Kael'thas's perspective of this, as it's wont to do; like all children, he has grown into an adult who has been made both stronger and more vulnerable by loss, and there are times when he feels irrationally regretful of his lack of memories of his two parents.

 

Of his mother he remembers little beyond her voice, as vague and quiet as it now sounds in his mind. He has pictures of her, yes, but it has been many years since she passed away, and he was quite young when she did; the few memories he has of her are all similar to this one, blurry and incomplete. But there _are_ things he remembers, few as they are.

 

The hot chocolate she used to make him, the kind with marshmallows and whipped cream and sugar stars in it, so sweet it makes his teeth ache just thinking about it; at the time, face red and fingers cold from the snow outside, he could never get enough of it. The taste of cinnamon and melting sugar clung to his tongue as he smiled to his parents, a mustache of chocolate over his lips, and their answering smiles was as warm as the beverage in his hands. The tune of the lullabies she would sing to him to put him to sleep, although the words are lost to him. Little things, enough to make him feel like he still has a grasp on her, decades after.

 

But it is hard to grieve the loss of so much of her character, when what little he does remember inspires such inexplicable joy, the last remnants of an early childhood he can't remember.

 

He still has some of the toys he got on this year; most stored away in a box for when he has children of his own to give them to, maybe, and a stuffed bird he dragged with him everywhere for years and which now sits on his bookshelf. In the absence of actual memories, it will have to do — and it does its job admirably, seeing as he kept it through the best and worst parts of his life, his last connection to a past that is now out of his reach.

 

 

**2\. The first without his mother**

 

Eliandra Sunstrider died two months before Kael'thas's fifteenth Winter Veil, in a car accident that was all the more painful because of how unexpected it was.

 

You can never be prepared for the terrible end of a wasting disease, or the final breath of a coma patient. How could they have been anything but shell-shocked by such a sudden death? Months of preparation aren't enough, let alone the few minutes they spent wondering why his mother was late before they received the call telling them of her fate.

 

They had never made any kind of preparation — how could they have? The idea of dying at their age had always been a distant concept, the vague knowledge that, sure, people die at any age, but surely not _them_ . Surely not _now_.

 

So this year, instead of spending November preparing for Winter Veil and the social gathering his parents would or wouldn't attend, Kael'thas and his father spent the month preparing for his mother's funeral. Her family, scattered all across the world by a same, apparently genetic wanderlust, flied to Silvermoon for an early-December burial. It snowed; the whole thing was very picturesque, with her mother's cheek covered in tracks of mascara and her casket covered by a mantle of white, snow and rose petals intermingling in morbid beauty.

 

Kael'thas didn't cry. He wanted to, if only to maybe loosen the knot of pain in his throat, but the tears wouldn't come. Maybe he was too old to cry; maybe he had done so too much in the past weeks, and they had all dried up. Or maybe he thought of his mother, saying _'You and I, we have to take care of your father, or he'll never do it himself',_ and realized he _couldn't_ cry anymore.

 

Looking at his father, he didn't see the unmovable mountain he once did. He saw a shattered, forlorn man in a tailored suit now too big for him, thinned by grief and stress, trying to stand straight and hold it together for appearance's sake and, more than anything, for his _son's_. But Kael'thas didn't need his father to be brave. He needed his father to be alright, because Kael'thas had lost his mother and he was scared of losing his father, too. The man would never abandon him willingly, of course, but grief can do terrible things to the mind, and Kael'thas feared more than anything else to see his father waste away, sent adrift by the loss of his wife.

 

He had always had a proportion to drown himself in his work; how bad would it get, now that Eliandra wasn't there to hold his head above the water anymore?

 

His mother would have wanted him to have a happy, normal childhood, but his mother probably also wanted to stay alive, so it's clear life didn't hold her wishes very high in its list of priorities. So, Kael'thas made do, and tried to fill — in part — the empty space in their lives that she used to inhabit.

 

He learned to cook, because they couldn't live off frozen meals and take-out forever, no matter how much he wished they could. It wasn't very fun, considering Kael'thas had the usual unpredictable magic of his kind and a natural affinity for fire, which meant his meals tended to end up burned whether he forgot them in the oven or not. Fortunately his father never seemed to notice. The first week saw him drifting from place to place like a ghost, sitting in front of the blank tv screen for hours without seeming to notice anything happening around him; after that, he was just too engrossed in his work or too dead on his feet because of it to care what he was putting in his mouth as long as it was edible.

 

He even got better at it, eventually, for which he was grateful once he left home, but still. Cooking wasn't all the fun his mother made it up to be. She had filled notebooks upon notebooks of hand-written recipes from mothers, grand-mothers, cousins, neighbors — the perks of being raised in a large family that married for food more than anything else. But all of these recipes were _terribly vague_ , calling for measures that made no sense. What was a cup? A spoon? A _pinch_? Those were the things he should have learned with his mother looking over his shoulder, making sure he didn't fuck it up too badly, but he had never been interested in cooking before.

 

Still, it made him feel closer to her, to copy her habits and move around the kitchen that had been her kingdom — and her husband's, albeit reluctantly, because she was territorial but he had always been better at baking than her.

 

He cleaned the house, too, although as a teenager he might not have done it as often as he should have. He did his homework on top of the rumbling washing machine, so as to not forget to dump the whole load in the dryer once it was done, and poked and prodded his father until the man agreed to take a nap or go sleep in his — cold, empty — bed rather than his desk.

 

He got by.

 

He would never say it was easy, because losing his mother and having to keep the house afloat royally _sucked_ , but it wasn't so much that he had trouble balancing his schoolwork and his chores. It's not as if he had younger siblings to take care of. It wasn't a good time for any of the Sunstrider, but it was— manageable.

 

And then, on the 25th — the first day of Winter Veil, which he had not noticed approaching — he woke up to the smell of pancakes and bacon.

 

His father had refused to even set foot in the kitchen after Eliandra's death, but that's exactly where Kael'thas found him when he padded down the stairs. Anasterian looked exhausted, with dark rings under his eyes and disheveled hair, and he wore an expression of resolute melancholy, as if soldiering on through the grief the room inspired him.

 

And he was cooking Kael'thas's favorite breakfast.

 

“Good morning?” Kael'thas called out, confusion and relief fighting for his voice.

 

His father smiled gently at him. “Hi, Kael. Sit down, this'll be ready in no time.”

 

Indeed, soon enough, his father put down in front of him a plate filled with chocolate chips pancakes and bacon — Kael'thas had _opinions_ about how and when to mix sweet and savory, and this was one of those times. Anasterian sat in the opposite chair and watched him eat in silence for a moment.

 

“I'm sorry,” He finally said.

 

“What for?”

 

“I—” He rubbed his forehead. “Light, it's been weeks since we've talked. _Really_ talked,” He added when Kael'thas opened his mouth to respond. “Asking for the salt isn't discussion. So, I'm sorry. I haven't been here for you since Eliandra died, although that is when you needed me most, and I want you to know I'll do my best to do better, now.”

 

He stumbled a bit on the name, but his voice was calm, devoid of the all-consuming grief Kael'thas had gotten used to hearing lately.

 

“It's okay, dad,” He assured. “You need someone to take care of you.”

 

“Maybe I do, but it shouldn't have to be you. I'm your father, _I'm_ the one supposed to be taking care of _you_ ,” Anasterian said.

 

Kael'thas slowly put down his fork, at loss for words. Sensing this, his father opened his arms for a hug — something he hadn't done since Kael'thas had entered his rebellious phase, telling everyone who would listen he wasn't a kid anymore. Kael'thas almost sent his chair crashing when he threw himself in his father's embrace, folding himself in his hold and hiding his face in his father's hair as soon as he could.

 

And then, he finally cried, because there had been a weight on his chest for months and finally, _finally_ , it had been lifted.

 

His father shushed him gently, rubbing his back. After a while, his sobs subdued until all he did was sniff pathetically in the wet spot on his father's shirt. He leaned back.

 

“I didn't get you anything,” His father said regretfully.

 

“It's ok,” He replies. “This year, you're all I wanted."

 

 

**3\. The first away from home**

 

The Kirin Tor was one of the most prestigious college of magic in Azeroth, and second only to the Suramar Academy of Magical Arts in terms of age. It sat in the old town of Dalaran, which was as much a beautiful piece of history as it was a breeding ground for tourists traps of all sorts.

 

As a human city for centuries, the city lacked all kind of the cohesion or flamboyance that seemed to be the centerpiece of his homeland. Rather than one art piece built over millenniums, like Silvermoon or Darnassus, it was an assemblage of timepieces, three different architectural movements cobbled together in a single street. Its long history with the Alliance and the presence of the Kirin Tor itself meant there was little to no influence from any kind of elven culture in the mess, too: the roofs were Stormwind-blue and there was a curious absence of greenery — something even blood elves insisted on, a last remnant of their thoroughly forgotten kaldorei heritage. It was cramped and all too close to Northrend for comfort, because the city had stopped flying a few miles from the cost for reasons lost to history, meaning it was cold and rained all too often.

 

Kael’thas fell in love with the whole place instantly.

 

This, more than his academic capacities, is why he chose to study at the Kirin Tor, rather than at SAMA, which also accepted him. Suramar was beautiful but it was so terribly close from home, and so radically far from it too. The tall spires and elegant archways were familiar; the constant half-night it was kept in, the only change being the color of the light barely peeking above the horizon, was not.

 

At least here he was entirely out of his depth, rather than stuck in some cultural uncanny valley.

 

Snow made everything softer, and more pale too, as if seen through a thin curtain of mist. It dampened sounds and Kael'thas, watching the small cloud of his breath disappear in the cold air, though that it was kind of magical, in its own way.

 

“What the _fuck_ are you doing.”

 

Kael'thas sniffed, slightly miffed — and also because his nose wasn't all too happy with the temperatures — and turned to Rommath.

 

“Well, I _was_ enjoying the quiet, but I guess that's out of the question now.”

 

Rommath, mature as he was, rolled his eyes. “ _Excuse me_ , your majesty.” The amount of sass he managed to put in the four words was frankly worthy of admiration, and Kael'thas felt suitably impressed by it. Rommath made a show of looking around, nodding as he did. “Wow, how fascinating. Everything's white and cold as fuck.”

 

Kael'thas pushed his shoulder, chuckling. “Shut up you _asshole_ , I haven't seen so much snow in _years_.”

 

“Bless your poor, sheltered soul,” Rommath said, patting his head. He was maybe an inch or two taller than Kael'thas and liked to remind him at every occasion. “Seriously, though, aren't you cold?”

 

Kael'thas sniffed again. Without his previous state of almost-meditative wonder, he was suddenly very aware of his uncomfort. He couldn't feel his nose or the tip of his fingers anymore, and his toes felt unpleasantly wet.

 

“I kind of am, actually.”

 

“How shocking. Call the press! This will be tomorrow's headline: _man cold in subzero temperatures_ , more page three.”

 

And then, ignoring his grumbling, Rommath hooked his arms in his and dragged him up the stairs, through the tall doors of the Kirin Tor and into the magically-warmed hall. They left half-melted snow on the pristine floor, laughing as they made their way to their dorm room. The long, purple-hued corridors of the college were empty, most students gone for the holidays, but some — like them — had no reasons to do so. Rommath had been thrown out of the foster system as soon as he reached eighteen, to his and his foster family's great relief apparently, and Kael'thas would have invited him home if Anasterian hadn't been on a business trip during the week, meaning his home was as empty as Rommath's was absent.

 

But they had each other and the whole Kirin Tor to themselves, so it wasn’t all bad, really.

 

They sat together on Rommath’s bed, shoulder to shoulder against the wall. He had way more pillows than anyone sane ought to, but Kael’thash had to admit it was comfortable. Then, Rommath fished a bottle from under the bed, and handed it him.

 

The label read _Darnassian_ _ho_ _ney_ _wine,_ and Kael’thas glanced at his friend. “We’re not supposed to have alcohol in our rooms.”

 

The bottle opened with a _pop_. “I know.”

 

“Why— where— why didn’t anyone notice? I’m pretty sure they use magic to check around,” Kael’thas finally settled on, rather more interested on the mechanics of the thing rather than the name of Rommath’s supplier.

 

“I’m blackmailing our RA, the SAMA exchange student brought a whole box of those with her and game me a bottle in exchange for a pass for the side of the library that needs permission from a professor to go into,” Rommath replied, as if those were everyday activities — knowing him, they were — and not mildly illegal actions. “As for the why, well. We’re alone on campus for Winter’s Veil, I think that’s as good a reason as any to get absolutely shitfaced on mead.”

 

“Where the _hell_ did you find that pass?” Kael’thas asked, completely overlooking the bottle and the whole blackmailing business — the latter for his own sanity — at the idea of finally being able to get his hands on some Fel theory. It sounded interest, and he wasn’t keen on waiting until he was done with his bachelor’s degree to satisfy his curiosity.

 

“Kael, buddy, my bartering system is both long and tedious to summarize and I am not going to do that now,” Rommath said, and then, “Are you going to drink or not?”

 

“Yeah, but you better get _me_ one too. As a Winter’s Veil gift?”

 

“Ugh, a’ight. Now, less talking, more juvenile alcoholism.”

 

This is how Kael’thas spent his very first Winter’s Veil away from home: getting drunk on kaldorei honey wine with his best friend, watching the snow slowly fall on the other side of the window. The sight — one he truly hadn’t seen since his childhood — made his heart ache, the image of his mother’s face flitting through his mind, and he said,

 

“I miss home.”

 

“Yeah,” Rommath said, and that was that.

 

At some point, they would get up and stumble toward the mess hall, giggling and shushing one another, and the kitchen staff would pretend they don’t notice anything while they sneak pastries in their pockets and pile up their plates with greasy comfort food, and they would make subpar hot chocolate with chocolate powder and tiny marshmallow Kael’thas keeps for finals week, but not yet.

 

For the time being, they stayed where they were, skin to skin, finding comfort in the knowledge that wherever they were, at least they were together.

 

 

**4\. The first alone**

 

Kael’thas spent his twentieth Winter’s Veil alone. It was the first time, but far from the last, and he knew it.

 

Having received his bachelor’s degree — two years early, at that — he had decided to move out of the dorms, so celebrating the week with the other students wasn’t possible. Not like he’d want to, considering apprentice mages were either pedantic dickheads, dumber than a brick wall, or both, but still. And Rommath, who had moved out of the dorms and moved _in_ with him, had finally decided to spend his third — and likely _last_ — undergraduate year at Silvermoon’s College of Magic, far from, in his words, “the Kirin Tor’s bullshit”. He seemed to be having fun, at least.

 

Sylvanas became unreachable every year during this period, for what she cryptically explained as ‘family reasons’, and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to spend the holiday with her, anyway. Same went for Jaina, who went back to her family, wherever _that_ was. All his other friends or acquaintances — what few of those he had — were either absent or otherwise occupied, and it didn’t really matter anyway. Who he really wanted to spend the holiday with wasn’t a classmate, not even his best friend — he just really, really wanted to spend it with his father .

But Anasterian Sunstrider had been shot dead in February, during a bank hold-up gone wrong, and no amount of healing magic or prayers could bring him back when the ambulance finally got on the scene. Kael’thas was in class when he had gotten the call; an unknown number and a grave voice that begun the call with, _Kael’thas Sunstrider? I’m sorry. Your father passed away._

 

 _Passed away_ , ha. What a joke. That’s something you’d say for an old man sighing his last breath in his sleep, someone wasting to nothing in a hospital room. There’s no passing involved in a murder; there’s too much blood, too much fear and suddenness for the soul to leave in peace. Even then, still as a statue, back pressed against the stone wall of the empty corridor, Kael’thas could imagine his father clinging to life, fingers red and clumsy against his bleeding chest, trying to dig out the bullet embed between his ribs.

 

It didn’t hit his heart outright, apparently. He bled out slowly, agonizing on the cold floor, in front of all the hostages and the trigger-happy robber.

 

Kael’thas hadn’t even bothered to come back inside the room once the caller had hung up. He had walked out of the building on autopilot, out of the city and toward the ocean, and then he just — sat there, legs dangling over the cliff side, with the waves crashing against the rocks below, and the freezing, salt-heavy wind had cut right through his clothes but not through the numbness. That’s how Rommath had found him, an hour or two later: staring at the ocean, shivering without realizing it, with his phone held in his white-knuckled hand.

 

The numbness never truly wore off, after that. Months later, Kael’thas still finds himself staring into space, thinking, _I have no one left_. Sure, he had Rommath, but what else? His whole family was gone like so much smoke in the wind, nothing left but a name that meant nothing when he was the only one to carry it.

 

He buried his mother; he buried his father; and now that he had no one left to bury, Kael’thas felt very alone.

 

He was sitting on the ground, the only light in the room coming from his laptop on the coffee table in front of him, and idly scrolling through social medias while drinking cheap wine straight from the bottle. He had eaten an entire box of cinnamon-chocolate cookies for dinner and, right now, felt like he had every reason to be miserable for a little while.

 

Just as he was about to, maybe, start working on the paper due for after the holidays, skype pinged with an incoming call; he accepted it without thinking, or checking who could possibly be calling him at such an hour on such a day.

 

Rommath’s face appeared on his screen, surrounded by the fairy lights he insisted on hanging everywhere as soon as December rolled in. He looked at Kael’thas and immediately, his expression became a lot more disapproving and concerned.

 

“Shouldn’t you be celebrating?” Kael’thas asked, too tired to listen to one of his friend’s diatribe.

 

“Lor’themar went back home to sleep like the weakling he is,” Rommath complained, “And Halduron can’t hold his alcohol, he passed out on my couch two hours ago.”

 

“Oh.” This explained that.

 

Rommath reached for something out of the camera sight, and came back with half a bottle of—

 

“Darnassian honey wine?” Kael’thas huffed. “Really?”

 

“Hey, you know damn well how good that is.” Rommath waved his bottle accusingly. “You, on the other hand, I can judge. What the _fuck_ are you drinking.”

 

“Pandaren plum wine.”

 

“Cheap one.”

 

He shrugged. “It’s festive _and_ distinguished.”

 

Rommath didn’t reply to that. Instead, he fished a glass out of whatever chaos laid behind the camera, and filled it with mead. He drank all of it in one go, then filled it again. “Shit. Here we are again, celebrating Winter’s Veil alone while getting drunk.” He laughed. “Like real adults!”

 

Kael’thas saluted him with his bottle. “Cheers to that.”

 

“Nothing cheerful ‘bout that, buddy.”

 

“Well, we’re together another year, aren’t we?”

 

“Yeah,” Rommath said, looking thoughtfully into his glass. “We are.”

 

They stayed silent a second, and then Kael’thas tried to take a drink and ended up putting wine all over his shirt and nowhere near his mouth, and Rommath dissolved into drunken giggling, which broke the moment.

 

“Happy Winter’s Veil,” Rommath said.

 

“And a happy new year,” Kael’thas replied, and they drank.

 

 

**5\. The first with Illidan**

 

There were many things Kael’thas could and should have been doing on the eve of the new year, including but not limited to celebrating it with people, eating an actual meal for once or catching up with his sleep schedule.

 

It was to be noted that this list did not, in any place, mention ‘grading papers in a lab at eleven in the evening’ and yet here he was, doing exactly that.

 

It wasn’t even his lab. The Fel department was as far from every other labs as was physically possible in the finite space of the Kirin Tor, and Kael’thas was a TA for an _enchantment_ professor.

 

(It also had a bad history with _existing_ at the Kirin Tor, considering the last time a class on the Fel had been taught was a decade ago, by a teacher who was now serving a life sentence in prison for a few major crimes, including attempted murder (the faculty didn’t like to talk about it. Stormrage had apparently barged into the Kirin Tor and kind of taken the position without really asking permission for it, and now they didn’t have any other choice but to pay him for the job. His class, small as it was, had an odd ride-or-die mentality that promised the death of any institution trying to make Stormrage leave.

 

Kael’thas, although he wouldn’t consider himself one of the so-called ‘Illidari’, definitely understood the loyalty. The subject was interesting in and on itself, but Stormrage — a prodigy in his own right — made it something you couldn’t look away from, no matter how much you wanted to. Kael’thas had only been able to take the class for a year because of schedules problem, and also because he had a thesis to write, but it left him with a pretty solid understanding of the subject and a computer full of Stormrage’s papers, read multiple time and with great enthusiasm.

 

The fact that the man was unfairly attractive for a mage also helped.)

 

This didn’t explain why he was in the lab, but it explained why they _let_ him be there. Because he wasn’t alone: a few students were staring at Excel sheets, ongoing experiments, or both, more often than not; one was scribbling furiously on loose paper; another was actually napping on a couch pushed in a corner of the already cluttered room, a book on the Burning Legion opened on his chest. apparently, he wasn’t the only one with nothing else to do on the 31st.

 

Why _he_ had come was another problem entirely. Not eager to go back to his empty apartment, Kael’thas had remembered that the Fel lab was always open to students with the right card, and he had kept his, which technically wasn’t illegal. It was isolated, which meant it was quiet, and people were unlikely to come to bother him or even to go looking for him there. It had been a surprise to find that the lab wasn’t as empty as he’d thought, but the other students had glanced at him when he had arrived and then, recognizing him from last year or simply not caring, had let him be.

 

It was a peaceful sort of cohabitation, like studying in a coffee shop but with the knowledge that he distantly knew everyone present. At some point, one of the students — Illysae, he thinks her name waq — had brought him a chocolate chips-cinnamon cookie and coffee in a plastic cup, without a word beyond a commiserating ‘good luck’. He had appreciated both gestures. After that, maybe realizing the strange blood elf in the corner wouldn’t breathe fire at them at contact, the ‘illidaris’ had drifted to him every so often, reading over his shoulders and making faces upon reading the stupidities some of the freshmen wrote. They acted like curious cats presented with a new family member, carefully edging into his personal space until they either hit him or his limits.

 

He let them, if only because it was fun to see.

 

After a while their coming and goings fell into the general background noise of his surroundings as he entered what he called his Teaching Zone. He mostly forgot about them, muttering insults and tired comments under his breath without ever expecting a reply or a reaction from them, and never noticed the sudden silence around him as he kept grading.

 

Then, he said, “Light damn it, Wildcrest, that’s not how runes work, who raised you? Quilboars?”

 

And a voice above him replied, “That’s not very kind to quilboars.”

 

He waved his hand, too focused on his work to be annoyed at anything but the mistakes on the paper. “This is so stupid it might as well be written by one. Seriously, what is this even supposed to _mean_?”

 

A hand appeared in his vision, one sharp nail tapping on a line of runes. “It’s supposed to be— protection from arcanic backlash, I think? That’s not how these runes work, though, how did this guy survive for so long?”

 

“ _I don’t know!_ ”

 

And then, because exhaustion and genuine distress made him a little slow on the uptake, Kael’thas finally glanced up, only now fully registering the presence of someone else. He froze as soon as he did, torn between recoiling and swearing in surprise when he saw that the person above him was not, in fact, a fellow student, but professor Stormrage — and his internal monologue made a sudden shift from a constant stream of thoughts to a long, continuous scream of pure terror.

 

Illidan Stormrage had this effect on most people.

 

He still wasn’t sure how much the professor saw; his eyes were glowing but dim and surrounded by a mess of scar tissue and runes, which in any other case would be a pretty good indication of blindness, but no amount of blind jokes could convince Kael’thas that Illidan did not, in fact, see absolutely everything. And as an example of that, the man grinned slowly, not bothering to hide his amusement in the face of Kael’thas obvious panic.

 

Fortunately, he seemed to find a sliver of mercy in his heart, and didn’t comment on it. Instead he straightened up and looked around the room. The students here had all stopped moving, watching their teacher with admiration despite him doing absolutely nothing — he also had _that_ effect on some people.

 

“What are you all doing here?” He asked to his students, crossing his arms on his (very fine) chest. “It’s Winter’s Veil. Classes start again next week.”

 

“Nothing else to do,” Someone replied, and a few other murmured something in the same vein.

 

“My family hates my guts,” The girl who brought him the cookies said. The man at her elbow nods in agreement.

 

“And, anyway, what are _you_ doing here?”

 

Illidan shrugged. “Same thing, honestly.” He tilts his head, and his grin turns more genuine, more like a smile. “Fortunately, I knew how much of an asocial bunch you are, so I brought food.”

 

He raised his hands. Kael’thas, still on the floor, saw that he was holding two plastic bags that smelled suspiciously like pandaren take-out. He raised hopeful eyes toward Illidan, who technically wasn’t his professor anymore and as such didn’t _have_ to feed him.

 

“Yes, even for you. Even though I have no actual idea what you’re doing here.” Illidan dumped the two bags on a near-by table. The experiment on it wobbled dangerously, green energy flaring, and Kael’thas wondered if he was really _that_ hungry.

 

(He was.)

 

“I was in your class last year.” Illidan offered him his hand and he took it gratefully. His legs felt like they had seceded from his body after so much time spent cross-legged on the cold floor.

 

“I remember you, I think. Kael’thas, was it?” He nodded.“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

 

“I’d say I like the company, but—” He gestured toward Illidan before he could help himself. Illidan snorted.

 

“I’ll have you know everyone here thinks I am _delightful_ , thank you very much.” One of the student coughed quite pointedly. “Oh, shut up, Verdant.”

 

Because they were merciful, somewhat, they opted to give Illidan a break — and Kael’thas’s heart, as well, considering he almost had a heart attack after his stupid comment — and dug into the food instead.

 

(It was greasy and delicious. No regrets.)

 

After that, he didn’t do much in terms of grading but, somehow, Kael’thas couldn’t find it in himself to regret coming to the lab that night.

 

 

**+1. The first with his whole family**

 

Kael’thas opens the door and finds himself face to faces with a gang of very bright, very shiny blood elves.

 

“Rommath?” He asked.

 

Lor’themar sighed, looking both very dejected and very festive in his shining wool sweater. It is an awful mix of purple, red and gold. It’s an abomination in the eye of god. It hurts Kael’thas’s eyes just glancing at it; the pain of wearing it, especially for Lor’themar — whose wardrobe mostly consists of shades of black and brown — must be unbearable. “Rommath,” He agrees.

 

The man in question tugs his scarf out of his face just so that his friend can see his gigantic, unapologetic grin. He himself is decked out in a bright red, sleeveless, turtleneck sweater, which makes him rather look like the ‘slutty’ reimagination of a traffic light, the kind you never want to see and lowkey hate when you are made aware of it. Kind of like Rommath, actually.

 

Ah, who is he kidding. Kael’thas loves the man like a brother, in all his eye-bleeding glory.

 

He gestures his friends inside. Halduron salutes him cheerily as he passes him by, apparently unruffled by the silver-and-blue atrocity that he’s wearing. The color scheme isn’t ugly in and on itself, especially not when compared to that of his two companions, but the pattern looks like something someone on drugs would have hallucinated. Also, anything with the words ‘Back At It Again With That Elf Shit’ stitched on it should be illegal. It’s definitely a crime against fashion, and an attempted murder of Kael’thas’s fragile sensitivity. Sylvanas hip checks him out of the way, gracefully rolling her eyes at the whole thing. She is dressed in a black and silver dress, which is about as festive as she’ll ever get, and is holding a bottle of expensive champagne in each hand. He can respect her commitment to her aesthetic, at least, whatever it may be.

 

“Where’s your pet disaster?” She asks him, slamming the two bottles on the dinner table. She glances around the room with a mixture of disgust and fondness on her face. It’s— incredibly festive, it’s true. There’s a pine tree covered in enough decoration that the fact it is green can be doubted, and golden garlands thrown on every piece of furniture. The fairy lights are out of control. Kael’thas himself might have gone overboard with the gold, but damn it, it’s Winter’s Veil. If he doesn’t wear gold winged eyeliner on Winter’s Veil, when will he?

 

“Who, Illidan?” She nods. He huffs. “In the kitchen, which — I remind you — I have been banned from since this morning. I’m pretty sure he died in there and I’m just not aware of it yet because I’m not allowed inside.”

 

“Quit telling everyone I’m dead!” Says the muffled voice of Illidan, coming from the aforementioned kitchen. “And get in there, I need you to drag this mountain of food to the table.”

 

Kael’thas rolls his eyes and Rommath, who is very mature, does the same. “How flattering. Such responsibilities, bestowed upon my simple self. How could I, a normal elf, be worthy of a task such as this one?”

 

“I’ll help,” Halduron says, because he’s a sweetheart and still not really aware that everyone in the room could break him in half and, as such, don’t need him to lift heavy things for them.

 

Well, Rommath and Lor’themar he is aware: it’s not like they hideit, what with Rommath running around without sleeves in December and Lor’themar being built like a brick house, and Halduron is the kind of guy who’s definitely into people who are able to bench press him anyway. Sylvanas _looks_ like she could kill a man with her bare hands; it’s a very dashing look, mind you, and she would probably make it look effortless and kind of hot, but she also hides it well enough that if, like Halduron, you keep a safe distance from her, it’s not _immediately_ apparent that’s the only thing standing between you and death at her hands is the flimsy wall of her own morals. Kael’thas, on the other hand, is a dirty magical cheater who weighs about as much as a kitten but also waves words around as a hobby, and as such stands in a grey area.

 

Still, unnecessary as it is, he appreciates the sentiment, so he smiles and says _please, thank you_ and means every word.

 

The kitchen smells a bit like heaven and a lot like something burned in there in the last two hours, which is a usual smell when it comes to this household, so Kael’thas pays it no mind. Instead he looks at the food Illidan has been cooking all day long and whistles, impressed.

 

“Looks good,” Halduron agrees.

 

“I couldn’t say,” Illidan says, and Kael’thas pokes him in the shoulder.

 

“Blind joke jar,” He says. Illidan grumbles, good naturedly and dumps his pocket change into the glass jar, which is almost full — for the second time that month.

 

They bring back the food to the table, although they have to enlist the help of Lor’themar too. Kael’thas isn’t the only one who goes overboard when in the holiday’s spirit, it seems. But in the end they manage to fit all the plates on the table, and they sit around it in a gleeful chatter of voices and jokes being thrown left and right.

Later, they’ll watch some awful horror movie, to compensate for the overdose of cheerfulness. They’ll mock the protagonists and Sylvanas will giggles during the gory parts and Rommath will rolls his eyes a lot. They’ll drink too much and Lor’themar will lifts his two boyfriends at once, just because he can. They’ll all end up falling asleep on the carpet, in a big dog pile of future aching backs, because they’re not so young anymore. And tomorrow, Aethas will come with fresh pastries from his family dinner and the illidaris will barge in with their own leftovers and the house will be a little too full, a little short on space, full of laughter and sarcastic remarks and a _lot_ of food.

 

But for now— for now Kael’thas just leans back, food piled high in his plate, and breathes in. The air smells wonderful, and when he looks around all he sees is his family, built from the ground up. It’s an odd feeling, to finally feel like he’s celebrating Winter’s Veil properly once again.

 

It’s a good feeling, to celebrate it with his whole family for the first time since he was five year old. He hopes there will be many more like it to come, in the next years.

 

**Author's Note:**

> In this: Winter veil is a week straight of celebration, from the 25th of December to the 1st of January. Usually, people exchange gifts with their close family on the night of the 25th, and then have a big dinner with them. The following days are for friends and stuff, and on the night of the 31st and morning of the 1st you give gift again, but this time to your friends as well. The new year's gifts are supposed to be a sign of what you want this year to bring them: some money if you wish them wealth, and a whole lot of other symbolism for success, love, etc.  
> Rommath is such an asshole that one year he got a rat skull in the mail, from someone who wished him to get the plague. He keeps it on his desk and is very proud of it. I am also very proud of him.
> 
> You can pry kael and sylv's friendship from my cold, dead hands
> 
> Don’t tell me Rommath wouldn’t spend half his academic life slowly taking over his school with shady business, because he absolutely would.
> 
> I don’t even know why the Kirin tor works like an american college, considering I have no idea how higher education (or, really, any kind of education) works in the usa. I’ve done as much research on this as I’ve done on my actual academic path, if not more .-.


End file.
